HOLLY SPRINGS, Miss. – The entire contents of Walter Place—a spectacular antebellum home completed in 1859 and used as a Union Army camp and officers’ quarters during the Civil War—will be sold at auction July 11-12 by Stevens Auction Company. Everything in the auction will come out of Walter Place; no additional consignments will be […]

It is a pretty well-known fact that Maurice Sendak—the American illustrator and author of children’s books best known for his book “Where the Wild Things Are”—which featured a boy named Max and a phalanx of fanged monsters that children loved, despite their somewhat grotesque appearance—decided to become an illustrator after watching Walt Disney’s film “Fantasia” […]

Sometimes, in my capacity as a writer, I stumble across little bits of information that make for a great story. The trick is to recognize those bits and how they fit into the big picture. In this case, the big picture includes a ’70s-era aloha (aka Hawaiian) shirt and the man who made it—who, by […]

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) recently released a 40-page report titled “Bidding Against Survival: The Elephant Poaching Crisis and the Role of Auctions in the U.S. Ivory Market.” The report is worrisome, because it appears that most U.S. auctioneers haven’t gotten the message that selling undocumented ivory is illegal, and auction buyers don’t […]

Incongruous as it may seem, the tumultuous changes in the social order in China and Hong Kong in the early 20th century would probably not have occurred without the behind-the-scenes activities of the Triads. In China, they were highly visible, some becoming style icons in their own right; in Hong Kong they were an ever-present […]

Last year’s Bonhams and Turner Classic Movies’ “What Dreams are Made of”auction drew more than 700 bidders who bought a wide array of movie memorabilia led by the more than $4 million paid for the authentic Maltese Falcon statuette used in the classic John Huston/Humphrey Bogart film. This year, more than 1,000 are expected to register for […]

Unless you are a circus enthusiast, the name Jomar probably doesn’t mean anything to you. Even an experienced antique collector can rarely identify what it is. Mention Jomar to a circus history enthusiast, though, and he will immediately recognize the name of John Ringling’s private railroad car. The name “Jomar” was created by combining the […]

And the hits just keep on coming—as far a high-end popular music collectibles are concerned—as Bob Dylan’s original hand-written lyrics for the 1965 epic “Like A Rolling Stone” fetched $2,045,000 Tuesday night at Sotheby’s to set an auction record for a pop music manuscript. The lyrics, which carried a $1- to $2-million presale estimate, were […]

“Gee, these old postcards are cool—but I’m not really a collector,” say several of my friends. Some tell me that they have a few old postcards that were sent to family members, and they just don’t know what to do with them. Let’s explore some ideas for interesting things can you do with postcards. Create […]

The new Most Expensive Thing in the World is a stamp; the 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta postage stamp, to be exact. The calculations going into the designation seem to make sense. The little red scrap of paper, measuring just one inch by 1 1.2 inches, sold on Tuesday night for $7.9 million. Add in […]